


Lessons

by halotolerant



Category: Colditz (1972)
Genre: First Time, Insomnia, M/M, Prisoner of War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:45:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'There is mental solace in any project where a man can learn. Or teach.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Arts of Escapology](https://archiveofourown.org/works/211122) by [kindkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit). 



> Thank you to kayberrisford for beta-reading.

Nothing is ever really new in Colditz. Nothing is unexpected.

There are fears - niggling anxieties, something that could be paranoia if you let it. Everything that comes with confined spaces and unvarying company, with nothing for the mind to work on. 

Nothing is exciting. Nothing is beautiful. Nothing thrills. 

Breaking the rules, risking something, trying to escape - this is in itself a way to free the mind. The split seconds to hide a fake passport, to scramble and store away a map before the door opens, a whistled warning sending a delicious chill down the spine; these moments bring a rush of feeling, a moment of sheer unpredictability that swiftly becomes addictive. 

But everyone cannot be involved in such things all the time. There are other ways to challenge the mind - since Colonel Preston has imposed some kind of order, many men have found occupations to take them through the grind of day-to-day existence.

There is mental solace in any project where a man can learn. Or teach. 

Dick Player is teaching Captain Brent things that make him gasp.

\- - -

Dick began it idly enough. He was, after all, as frustrated as the next man, maybe more so, because he wouldn’t usually consider an absence of women any bar to a satisfying sexual encounter. So rather than pine, he’d been faced with the need for rigid self-control, which was easy enough to say but damn irritating by the two year mark.

He didn’t want to be hauled up before Colonel Preston over the rules and regulations, didn’t want to know whether Downing or Carter would think less of him – or rather, didn’t want his suspicions incontrovertibly confirmed. Didn’t want to be punched, or shunned or stuck in some connection with no space to get away from it, or, worse still, let down gently.

So when he murmured “Still not sleeping, eh?” to George Brent one morning, scrubbing up in the washroom, it was only to make conversation. 

George hadn’t looked at him. That had been the first clue. George had kept his focus on his hands, on lathering his sliver of cheap, slimy soap and running his long, thin fingers over his lean arms and then his somehow unexpectedly well-shaped torso. Though you often saw men eyeing each other up in the washroom, for many possible reasons but probably the most obvious one, Dick didn’t look himself, not usually – it didn’t seem sporting. 

Something about George’s shyness cried out to be noticed. 

“Not really. Can’t seem to silence my brain,” George muttered. 

Dick had shrugged, raising an eyebrow, words coming out in a natural torrent – how much self-censorship can a man manage? 

“Only one way to get blood out of the brain that I know of.”

George, blushing red, had obviously taken his meaning, but sighed, with the genuine despair of the achingly weary that made Dick worry – that was the second thing, that flash of concern, that need to give something in a situation where so much had been taken. 

“But that’s...by yourself... so very dull, rather pathetic.” George was still flushed; it spread down the hollow of his neck, across his chest, disappearing under the white cotton of his vest. 

Dick himself was naked – it was easier, faster and didn’t leave you in damp clothes. He’d never been embarrassed about his body, not since he’d learned to control it and realised how much power it could give him.

Just now, and for the first time in Colditz, it became an effort of will to maintain that control. He lifted the cold water in his hands and gave himself a generous dousing.

“After a whole year and there’s not even...” George licked his lips, sucking them into his mouth nervously, and Dick marvelled at the pure artlessness of it even as he tried not to see, tried to halt the licking heat that threatened to cross his own skin. “I suppose you might say I’m uninspired.” He gave a short laugh, mocking himself. “Anyway, eventually I’ll sleep, I must...” He cleared his throat, pouring cups of water over himself to rinse, clearly wanting to change the subject. 

Dick had let him go; in Colditz there was no need to rush anything and plenty of reason to be cautious.

\- - -

A few weeks passed. George still didn’t sleep, took to sitting out on the castle steps in the night and managed to acquire a hacking cough.

Dick tried to escape and got himself two weeks in solitary confinement, with a great deal of time to think and ample opportunity to hear the coughs echoing up from the courtyard.

\- - -

In a group, George let himself be talked over. Let Muir and a few others say what they liked to him, and his lack of protest first bewildered, then annoyed them, until, with the logic of those who have never matured past the ink-ball and Chinese-burn stage, they tried to plague him more often, more purposefully.

They would never perceive that they came off the worst from these encounters, and more worryingly, George didn’t seem to see it either. He stayed silent like a creature that has retreated all its vulnerable areas tightly into a small shell. 

But, Dick reasoned, nothing could eat, breathe - _live_ like that.

And George apparently couldn’t sleep either.

\- - -

“Still uninspired?” Dick asked, after his ‘welcome’ meal on the return from the solitary cells. The others had dispersed to their evening activities, more varied since the increase in parcels from the Red Cross and YMCA had provided a hundred new ways to channel one’s existence into pointlessness – what good, Dick wondered, did a game of chess do the world?

George was still sitting by him, had been telling stories of the events he’d missed with a gentle, dry humour, a keen observation that possibly came with an artist’s eye. Once, Dick had assumed George was quiet because he had nothing much to say, and he wondered how he could ever not have realised that it was the reverse – George saw everything, knew too much, saw too clearly. If he’d spoken it would have broken half of them, so it seemed he turned that eye solely on himself, catching his own failings with the same merciless ease. 

He felt almost cruel, bringing up the topic, but George, for all he blushed, kept a steady eye on him like he’d maybe been wondering if it would surface again too. 

“Still not sleeping,” George said in reply, in a low voice, uncertainly. His hands clenched and unclenched on his thighs – beautiful, long, thin hands. Dick had seen beauty, both real and artificial, but generally found it soured on close acquaintance as personality seeped through.

Every time he spoke with George, every time George smiled at him, he seemed to glow more brightly.

Dick sat forward, the bliss of food, of company, suffusing him. Since being recaptured he’d felt useless, but this, here, showed he still meant something to someone. 

There was power, still. Choice, of a kind.

In the past, he’d been used to chaps who knew exactly what they were doing. Certain clubs, certain gatherings, always the same crowd, jaded some of them, sighing away their cigarette smoke.

But this was George, blinking up at him then, like he couldn’t quite believe Dick was still gazing at him, clearly grasping the essentials of what was between them, but from – Dick was sure – a theoretical basis. A great deal of confused school-boy worship, a great deal of vague poetry and thoughts about noble friendship that dissolved into sweating, burning dreams someone had probably taught him to be ashamed of. 

George – eager, almost desperate, almost scared, coming into focus before him.

It was new. It was unexpected. 

It was something strangely close to what Dick remembered as being thrilling.

Dick smiled, kindly, casually – it wouldn’t do to spook him now. “Anything I can do to help?”

George’s mouth fell open slightly as he took a sudden, tight breath, and his lower lip was very red and very wet and Dick recalled very suddenly how it felt to ache for something other than food. 

Of course, Downing chose that moment to come over and demand extra pairs of hands for something involving idiocy and a cricket bat, and George, after startling like some wild animal, joined in with gusto, laughing louder than anyone. 

For a moment, Dick could see him at Winchester, in all the sports teams, clapping other boys on the shoulder, feasting on occasional praise, telling himself he’d grow out of how he felt about it all and criticising himself with increasingly little forgiveness.

\- - -

For something to do, George sketched him the next day, Dick sitting in one chair, quite still, watching George as he sat opposite, frowning and worrying his lower lip in his teeth as he drew.

Dick watched that lip as it became increasingly swollen, and thought rather idly of other times that George might bite it, or what sounds he might make if persuaded not to. 

And it was on his face - that was the worst of it. When George finally turned the sketch round to show him, there it was, captured perfectly in his expression: _Man, Interrupted Whilst Contemplating Fucking._

Something else too. Something in soft lines about the eyes, or the light in them, something indefinable that Dick hadn’t realised he felt himself, let alone had any intention of letting George perceive.

\- - -

George still wasn’t sleeping.

Dick generally dropped off easily enough himself, but that night, with his portrait tacked to his bedpost, he lay restless, eyes closed but entirely awake, aware of exactly when George tiptoed by on his way to his perch on the stairs. 

An uncertain amount of time passed before he followed. He was not entirely sure what could be making him nervous – this was after all what he’d wanted, in both a general and specific form, and there was clearly no probability of rejection.

A hundred times, perhaps, he’d done this in his life so far, set forth on the long, sweet road to seduction – underneath, one man was much like another, it was familiar enough.

But it did not feel familiar, or easy, or safe, as he padded across the floor and down the steps until he came across George, nibbling on a hunk of bread and staring into space.

“You’ll catch your death out here,” Dick heard himself saying, of all the obvious, useless, British things.

At night everything is closer to an edge; George turned to look up at him, eyes glittering in the dark.

“You come out here to make observations?”

Dick took a few more steps down and sat next to him, leaning in. Close to, George always smelt cleaner than any POW had any right to, a kind of bracing clearness like Earl Grey tea.

“Might not be so bad, I might bore you to sleep.”

George shook his head slowly. “No. No, I doubt you would.” He carefully put the bread in a small cardboard box and turned back. His breathing had become slightly faster. 

“Tell me what you want, George, don’t make me think I’m reading this wrong.” Dick knew, could feel it vibrating between them, that sweet hum of expectation you got with the right people, at the right time, but maybe George needed to hear it. 

“I want you to help me sleep,” George said, softly, after a pause. And then, “Dash it, Dick, I don’t... I don’t know how to...”

Dick slid his hand gently into George’s greatcoat, finding the cricket sweater and then a pair of pyjamas and then the skin of his belly, warm and tense under his touch. Dick let his hand rest down, slow and certain, rubbing gently, soothingly; George took a sharp breath. 

They stayed like that a while, Dick stroking the soft skin as he would some skittish creature, George trembling under him, his breathing becoming harsh, Dick fighting the urge to lean in and nuzzle at his neck – he needed to see George’s face, needed to know at once if the shivering was from fear.

Suddenly, George took the initiative, grabbing Dick’s hand and drawing it those few vital inches further down. His prick was hard, straining hard and leaking, and Dick worked him easily, letting out a low hiss of his own pleasure at finally doing this to someone, at feeling the heat and the tension once more under his hand and then having it melt away in an ecstasy of which he was author.

George bit his lip as he climaxed, hard, and Dick moved forward with a groan and kissed him, tasting blood and finally, finally, feeling the heat of his mouth, sucking that poor abused lip between his own, feeling George shudder under his hand again as he did so.

Some men who’d roger you without so much as a first-name basis were distinctly unsettled about kissing, but George didn’t seem to mind. Dick hadn’t expected George – tentative, uncertain George – to touch him, but his hand was there at Dick’s groin, gliding through layers of fabric and finding him, delicate fingers closing down with a gentleness that teased more than anything. 

It was too good not to move into, but somehow Dick managed it, steeling every muscle to keep still and let George go at his own pace. Looking at George’s face, Dick couldn’t help grinning in a kind of amused delight at how terrified he looked, and he kissed him again, moving from his mouth to his cheek, his temple, his ear-lobe and down his neck, aware of his own pleasure building, failing to stifle his own moans, especially as he realised what effect they were having on George. 

George started moving his hand more quickly, and Dick replaced his own onto George’s reawakened hardness, pressed his lips to George’s ear, licked and then blew a soft stream of air across the damp skin, making George’s hand miss a beat. 

“That feels incredible,” Dick murmured, letting his voice crack. “You feel incredible. I’d like to suck you – have you ever had that? Take you in my mouth, lick you, taste you, suck you deep inside and...”

George’s sound at his second climax was almost a cry, and for a moment they both froze, listening for any indication they’d been heard. 

Silence reigned, and Dick found that George had slumped against him, forehead pressed into his neck, panting and loose and helpless, still moving his hand on Dick despite his exhaustion.  
Dick put an arm round him, feeling a low thrum of heat that had nothing to do with the building arousal in his core. This was dangerous, desperately dangerous, and he felt electrically alive. 

He never passed an hour without wishing to be free of Colditz, but he felt a longing then so intense it was almost violent. To be gone, to be free, to be somewhere else with this, with George, somewhere with space, time and privacy, somewhere he could lay him out and show him that what he’d just had - that was nothing.

He kissed George again, harder this time. He tasted as good as he smelt, his tongue awkward at first but learning quickly – quiet, observant George. 

They pulled apart and George blinked up at him, all open mouth and fear and bravery, despite the terror, despite everything. “And can I... Can I do that for you?” he asked, and licked his lips again, and just happened to twist his wrist, or something, because suddenly Dick was climaxing, pressing his face to George’s shoulder and biting his coat to keep from making a sound no one would miss.

It had been so little, been nothing, but Dick was trembling now.

\- - -

Nothing is ever new, in Colditz.

Dick had thought so. Had thought that nothing could ever happen, just as he’d thought, really, by his age, that there could be nothing left to learn about life, not really.

Now he is teaching George Brent, and he knows more than George about life – has to, however you measure it, he’s sure – and certainly a great deal more about sex. 

And yet he has a strange feeling that he’s the one who’s changing.

It’s bright and wonderful, and terrifying and awesome. It feels like being caught, like being trapped and pierced and owned. 

It feels like something close to freedom, or the promise of it, or the reason to keep going until they get there. A reason to get there together.

\- - -


End file.
